Most. Obnoxious. Advertisement. Ever.

I know that being a frugalista is all the rage, but here is how the Diamond merchants deal with the current crisis:

Here's To Less.

Our lives are filled with things. We're overwhelmed by possessions we own but do not treasure. Stuff we buy but never love. To be thrown away in weeks rather than passed down for generations.

Perhaps it will be different now. Perhaps now is an opportunity to reassess what really matters. After all, if everything you ever bought for her disappeared overnight, what would she truly miss?

Right. Like you can eat a pair of diamond earrings, or burn them for heat. I suspect she will miss dinner more. DeBeers invented diamond marketing; according to How Stuff Works,

Prior to the 1930s, diamond rings were rarely given as engagement rings. Opals, rubies, sapphires and turquoise were deemed much more exotic gems to give as tokens of one's love, according to the book "Twenty Ads that Shook the World" by James B. Twitchell. Twitchell goes on to describe how De Beers changed the world diamond market.

This idea of connecting diamonds to romance was captured in a brilliant ad campaign begun in the 1940s, causing demand for diamonds to increase. Surely you've heard the De Beers advertisement that "A Diamond is Forever." This ad campaign, which was created by the N.W. Ayer advertising agency in 1947, transformed the diamond market. In 2000, Advertising Age magazine named the ad campaign the slogan of the 20th century. De Beers infiltrated Japan with the same ad campaign in the 1960s, and the Japanese public bought into the idea as much as the Americans did.

But I doubt in times like these, people will flock to diamonds and will go for things more fungible. Or edible.